Suchergebnisse

AbstractGeneralizations from a clinical knowledge base as well as from victim advocates may have resulted in overestimation of the prevalence of domestic violence in divorce mediation cases and an overly simple view of its consequences for victims in mediation. Careful empirical comparison between violence cases, identified by premediation screening questions, and nonviolence cases in a popuhtion (n = 216) of divorcing couples voluntarily seeking mediation, reveals that 23 percent have a history of violence. A policy of premediation violence screening and counseling may be able to adequately differentiate between the potentially small number of violence cases in which mediation is inappropriate and those cases in which mediation has the same results as it does for nonviolence cases.

In October 1979 the first university-based mediation service in the United States was born in the political science department of the University of Hawaii. Student and faculty volunteers developed an administrative system in facilities donated by the university. Mediation trainers were brought in to train the first 18 mediators who represented a cross section of the community. Student and faculty volunteers conducted outreach to citizen groups and agencies, the arranging and staffing of mediations, the collection of case materials and records, and the training of new mediators. This paper reports on the outcomes of the first nine months of the project's operation. Note: This working paper was originally published in 1982 by the Institute for the Study of Social Change, now the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues.